“I’D BEEN hearing this music in my head for low instruments over years. I can tell you, as a composer, when the music comes to me without being at a piano, bass or guitar, it’s the best and most powerful music that I have and it doesn’t happen that often but when it does, it’s powerful.”

This was the prime bassist Joe Fonda (born in Amsterdam, New York, in 1954) talking about his tunes on a proposed album on the Creative Improvised Music Projects (CIMP) label in 2005, as he assembled an extraordinary band of “low instrument” musicians to complement his bass.

New Yorkers Claire Daly and Joe Daley blowing their baritone saxophone and tuba respectively; Michael Rabinowitz and his bassoon with drummer Gerry Hemingway, both from New Haven, Connecticut, plus the German bass clarinet virtuoso Gebhard Ullmann.